Harry Potter and the Case of the Missing Author
by R.S.Lindsay
Summary: A hilarious story in which Harry Potter tries to hire a Chandler-esque private detective, Spade Marlowe, to find his missing author, J.K. Rowling. This fanfic is dedicated to those impatient, bellyaching fans who keep complaining that J.K. Rowling hasn't


"HARRY POTTER AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING AUTHOR"

From the Files of Spade Marlowe, Private Eye

[A bit of fan fiction for those impatient, bellyaching yahoos who are tying their hair in knots while griping and complaining that J.K. Rowling has yet to finish Book Five.]

BY R.S. LINDSAY

The night was cold as I stepped out of Ross's Diner. The city streets were dark and empty, and a sharp wind whistled in off the bay, blowing old newspapers and empty pulp covers across the pavement. A low fog was coming in, as Sandburg once said, on little cat's feet. I watched the little cat as it angrily shook the fog off its feet and scurried into a nearby alley, yowling like a demon.

I pulled the collar of my trenchcoat up around my ears, and lowered my hat over my brow. As I stepped off the curb, the reflected image of the neon sign that hung in the window of Ross's Diner blazed up at me from a puddle in the street. The backwards letters, R-E-N-I-D S'-S-S-O-R, stared back at me, bright red, from the inky depths of the water, as if reflected in some mirror of desire. (I remembered when Ross had first opened the place. He'd wanted to use his own last name as the name for his diner, but the folks at the Golden Arches had gotten into a tiff and threatened to sue him for copyright infringement.)

I made my way back through the darkened, silent streets towards my office. An hour earlier, I'd stepped out and gone round the corner to get a bite to eat at Ross's. I'd only meant to pick up a Blue-Plate Special and head back, but there was this guy named Carver sitting at the lunch counter, talking about minimalist fiction. He looked as if he hadn't had a drink in ten years, so I sat down and chewed the rag with him awhile. Then Ross had asked for his dishrag back. He still had to wipe off the counter, he said, and his dishrag wasn't going to be much good if his customers kept chewing it full of holes.

I picked a few fibers of the rag out from between my teeth with a toothpick. I told Carver that, whatever he had to say to the world, he should keep it short. When I left him, he was asking Ross for more gravy.

It was late, and I had to get back to the office. I still had a ton of work to do. A dame named Alice had hired me to find her missing white rabbit, and I'd spent the day down in Wonderland, interrogating the Walrus and the Carpenter about some missing oysters, getting nothing for my trouble but a whole lot of bull about "cabbages and kings." The case had taken an unexpected twist when the Queen of Hearts hired me to find the punk who had stolen her tarts. I knew I'd have to tread lightly on the case from here on. You could lose your head on a case like this.

I turned at the corner of Chandler Street and Hammett Avenue, and a strange sound met my ears. It was a low, sad saxophone, drifting down through the darkness, blue notes sifting through the rusted metal grilles of the ancient fire escapes that hung over my head. I'd heard the sound before. A small shadow sat hunched in the top-floor window of a nearby apartment building, the light from the street lamps below glistening off the edge of his sax, like moonlight on a switchblade. Little Boy Blue we called him, blowing his horn in the darkness. No Charlie Parker, but he'd set the mood in a pinch.

I climbed the steps to the Spillane Building. The front door squeaked as I opened it. Inside, the staircase that led up to the second floor was lit by a single, dim bulb. My footsteps echoed off the dirty walls as I climbed the creaking steps. My office is on the second floor, at the far end of the hall. I passed another office on my right, with the name "B. JONAS" printed in black letters on the frosted glass of the door. Some guy named Gibson had rented the office a while back, and people kept coming in and dropping letters in the mail slot. I'd tried to catch a glimpse of Gibson when he came in to pick up the letters. (Some said his name was Gibson. Others said the guy's name was Grant.) But so far, I'd only seen his Shadow.

Through the frosted glass on my own office door, I could see that the light was still on inside my office waiting room. That was strange. My secretary, Cookie, had told me she'd be gone for the night when I got back, and she always turned the light off when she left. Who could be here at this hour? I knew it wasn't the postman. He only came during the daytime, and he always rang twice. I slipped my hand inside my trenchcoat and opened the shoulder holster containing my roscoe. Softly, I pulled the gun from its holster, feeling the cool metal of the hammer under my thumb. With my other hand, I gently turned the knob on the door.

A small boy, about fourteen years old, sat in my waiting room. He stood up as I came in, looking pale, nervous. He had jet black hair, combed in an untidy fashion. He wore wire-rimmed glasses on his thin face, and stared at me with bright green eyes. On his forehead, there was a small, lightning-shaped scar. The moment I saw that scar, I knew who I was dealing with.

I'd seen his face, or one very much like it, on posters at the multiplex cinemas, on countless DVDs, game boxes, and VHS boxes down at the local video store, on lunchboxes, t-shirts, bookbags, notebooks, and calendars down at the mall. I'd seen his name printed in big gold letters on the hardcovers and paperbacks that stacked the shelves down at Barnes & Noble. I'd heard his name whispered down the long shadowy hallways of elementary schools, on the barren flats of playgrounds, little-league fields, and basketball courts, and in the dark, sinister corners of the children's stacks at the local library, where the kids sat still as death as they waited for storytime. I'd seen him on the magazine covers, on the Internet web sites, on the TV screen, in the movie houses.

He was everywhere these days. And now he was standing right here in my office.

Harry Potter. The Boy Wizard.

I slipped the gun inside my coat and placed it back in its holster. Even if I had needed it, it wouldn't be of much use against this kid.

He was dressed in strange, scarlet-and-gold robes, his Quidditch uniform, I suspected. In his right hand, he held a magic wand, holly-and-phoenix-feather by the look of it. A knotty, ash-handled broom, with the word "Firebolt" emblazoned on it in gold letters, stood in the corner.

He looked at me with his green eyes, and stammered, "Are you--are you Spade Marlowe!"

"That's me, kid," I said. "Spade Marlowe, Private Eye. And you'd be Harry Potter."

"Right. That's right." He looked around the waiting room, glanced nervously at Cookie's empty desk. "Er, sorry to bother you so late. Your secretary let me in."

His voice was a crisp English accent, a lot like the one I'd heard from the kid who played him in the movie.

"No problem," I said. "What's a kid like you doing in a place like this? Especially this late at night?"

"I, er, wanted to hire you."

I stared at him a moment. "Okay. Why don't you step into my office here."

I opened the door that led into my office and hit the light switch. A pale light illmunated the room, leaving shadows in the corners, near the bookshelves and filing cabinets that hugged the dirty walls. Harry Potter followed me in, leaving his Quidditch broom in the waiting room, and I shut the door. I pulled a small chair out from the wall, and pushed it in front of my dust-covered mahogany desk. The Boy Wizard stuck his wand in his pocket, and sat down.

I took off my hat and tossed it casually to one side. As usual, it landed perfectly on the hat rack. I took off my trenchcoat and flung it at the back of the door, where it hung perfectly on the coathook. I removed my shoulder holster as I walked around the desk, placed it in a desk drawer, and began rolling up my sleeves. The window was slightly open, and I could hear Little Boy Blue still blowing his horn from across the street. The sad notes filtered in from outside like the remnants of shattered dreams blown in by the breeze. The tin coffee pot on the hotplate was still warm. I picked up two empty coffee cups from the small table next to the wall.

"You like some coffee?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I ain't got any butterbeer."

Harry shook his head. "That's okay."

"You sure? You know, my secretary, Cookie, makes a mean pot of coffee. It'll put hair on your chest, kid."

He shook his head, again, smiling slightly. "No thanks."

I shrugged, and casually tossed one of the empty coffee cups out the open window. I filled the other with coffee from the pot, and moved to the filing cabinet. Opening the top drawer, I pulled out a fifth of Jack Daniels. "You don't mind if I add a little something extra to my coffee, do ya, kid?"

"No, Mr. Marlowe."

"Please, call me Spade." I poured a generous bit of Jack Daniels into my coffee, put the bottle back in the drawer, and sat down behind my desk. The swivel chair creaked as I leaned back in it. "So you met Cookie, huh?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, I got here just as she was walking out the door. She said you'd be back, and that I could wait for you. She told me all about you."

"Really, what did she say?"

"Well, she said you were tall, with broad shoulders, and that you normally wore a hat and trenchcoat, a shirt and tie, black slacks, and gumshoes. She said you have sandy hair, a ruddy face, a hooked nose, a square jaw, and dark eyes set a little too close together."

I nodded. "That about covers it."

"She also said you had a voice like Clint Eastwood." Sitting across the desk from me, the Boy Wizard smiled. "She was right. You do sound like Clint Eastwood."

"She's got that right," I said, smiling. "I sound exactly like Clint Eastwood. Just between you and me, I wanted to sound like Humphrey Bogart. But the only person who can really sound like Bogart is Bogart. What else did Cookie tell you about me?"

"Well, she said that on weekends, you and she usually go down to the Shady Goat Hotel and check into a room, where you--"

"Never mind, never mind!" I leaned my elbow on the desk and rubbed my eyes with the tips of my fingers. I was going to have to have a talk with Cookie about how much she told our clients while they were sitting in the waiting room.

"So anyways," I said, looking at Harry Potter. "What can I do you for, kid?"

"Well, I need you to find someone," said the Boy Wizard. "I'll pay you whatever you ask. I know you probably don't accept wizard money, but I can have it exchanged for Muggle money down in Diagon Alley."

"But who is it you want me to find, kid?"

"It's my author. Joanne Rowling," said Harry. "I haven't heard from her in two years."

I blinked. "You want me to find J.K. Rowling?"

"Yes, I prefer to call her 'Jo.' Her friends call her that."

"But wait a minute. You mean to say YOU don't know where she is?" I asked, surprised. "You of all people?"

"Well...in the past couple of years, we've kind of lost touch." The kid looked around apprehensively, then sighed. "Things were going so well. For the first four books, I mean. It was great. She was writing and I was, you know, attending school at Hogwarts and having all these adventures. We were getting along so well together."

He suddenly looked at me. "I'm sorry. Maybe, I should ask. How much do you know about me? And about Jo Rowling?"

I took a sip of my coffee, and smiled. "I read the papers. And the magazines and all that. Let's just say I'm well aware of you and your friend, J.K. Rowling. You both been in the news a lot lately."

"Yeah. I guess we HAVE been," said Harry Potter, with a weary look. "Well, anyway, as I said, things went just fine for the first four books. Then this thing with the movie comes along. And she's dealing with all these Hollywood types. And all this stuff with the merchandising comes out on the market. And suddenly, it's like I can't find her anywhere. I don't hear from her for months and months, and...well, I'm afraid I may have lost her. I'm really getting worried."

"I see." I rubbed my chin, thoughtfully. "So you think she may have gotten caught up in all this hype over the past coupla years? You're afraid you've lost her to the bright lights and the big city, is that it?"

"Exactly," said Harry. "I mean, I know she's been doing some other things. She got married again, I know that. And she bought herself a house in Edinburgh. I know that with all that's been going on, she's really busy right now, but still! Two years is a long time not to hear from your author."

"When was the last time you heard from Ms. Rowling?" I asked.

"When I was driving away from King's Cross Station in back of my Uncle Vernon's car, at the end of Book Four. You've read the books?"

"Mmm-hmm." I nodded. I had read the books. I'd wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I'd bought my own set of "Harry Potter" books and read them. They were good. Very good. The kind of good, hard, old-fashioned storytelling I hadn't seen in years, especially in the children's literature section. The kind of stuff you can read a few times over and not get bored with it. The kind of stuff I'd read to my own kids, if I ever had any. I couldn't help thinking that the boy who sat in my office now, staring at me across the desk, was lucky to have a talented dame like J.K. Rowling writing his adventures, creating such a magical world for him to live in.

"You've really read the books? All four of them?" Harry asked me now.

"Er, yeah," I said, puzzled.

"I thought I'd better check. Last week, I ran into this big kid who was only halfway through "Goblet of Fire." He nearly punched my lights out when I let slip what happens to Cedric Diggory at the end of the book."

I leaned forward and put my elbows on the edge of the desk. "Look, Harry. Can I call you 'Harry?' Suppose you back up a little bit, and tell me about your friend, Jo. Give me the background on you and her."

"All right." The kid shifted a bit in his chair. "Well, Joanne Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, England, near the town of Bristol, on July 31, 1966. Her father was named Peter. He was the manager in an aircraft factory. Her mother's name was--"

"No, no, no, no, no," I said, breaking in. "I don't need the biographical details. I mean, well...tell me about the first time that YOU became aware of J.K. Rowling."

"Oh, I see what you mean." Harry Potter thought for a moment. "Well. When I was a little boy, living in the cupboard under the stairs at my Uncle Vernon's house, I used to dream about different things. Sometimes I dreamed about Hagrid bringing me to the Dursleys on his flying motorbike. And I dreamed about other things, like the green light that Voldemort cast the night that my parents died."

"Well, anyway, one night when I was about six, I had this dream about a lady sitting on a train. She seemed to be thinking about something. Then I realized, she was thinking about me. And I knew that I'd appeared in her mind at that very instant."

"As time went by, I would dream about her even more. Sometimes I saw her sitting in a coffee shop somewhere, with a baby girl by her side. She was always writing in a notebook. And I understood that she was writing about me, that she was taking me out of her imagination and putting me down on paper, creating a fantasy world, and I was at the center of it. She created friends for me, like Ron and Hermione. And she created teachers for me, like Dumbledore and Professor Snape. And she created a villain named Voldemort, and I'm still having nightmares about him."

"By the time I went off to Hogwarts, I understood that this lady, Jo Rowling, wasn't really controlling me. She was creating the magic world and the adventures and everything, but I knew that I was the one who was really in charge of my own life, my own character. I was simply roaming around inside her imagination, doing whatever I had to do, attending classes at Hogwarts, playing Quidditch and all that. She was letting the stories write themselves, and using me as her guide. I've heard that authors do that. But Jo was always there when I needed her, ready to get me out of a jam when I couldn't get myself out. When I faced Voldemort for the first time, in front of the Mirror of Erised, she was there, in the back of my mind like an invisible friend, telling me what to do, what to say. In the next book, when I had to go into the Chamber of Secrets to rescue Ginny Weasley, she gave me a magic sword so I could slay the basilisk. And when I had to save my godfather, Sirius Black, from the Dementors in "Prisoner of Azkaban," Jo gave Hermione a Time Turner, so we could travel back in time and save him."

He shook his head. "I don't think I could have made it this far without Jo's help. I really felt her presence in the last book, especially during that graveyard duel with Voldemort. I never would have gotten out of there alive if she hadn't been there to help me. With all that happened in "Goblet of Fire," I'm amazed that I didn't lose my mind. There were so many plot twists, even I had to go back and read it a second time. And I was the main character in the book!"

"But then--then suddenly Jo goes and disappears on me. With everything that happened in Book Four--with Voldemort coming back, and Cedric Diggory's death, and Dumbledore parting ways with Cornelius Fudge--she leaves me hanging for two years! It's like I'm stuck in limbo now, waiting for her to come back. I'm going crazy wondering what's going to happen to me and my friends in the last three books. I know she's said that some of us are going to die, and that thought alone makes me sick to my stomach."

He gave a heavy sigh. "The thing is, I'm not the only one who's worried. Ron and Hermione are getting edgy. They were about to start up a romance with each other when the last book ended. And I know a lot of other people are worried too. They're badgering the people at the bookstores and the public libraries, asking them when Book Five is going to come out. It's even on the Internet now. I've checked the chat rooms and message boards, and people are sniping at each other. They've been waiting for Book Five to come out for so long, it's like they've run out of things to talk about. Last time I checked the "Harry Potter" fanboards, they were posting messages about whether or not Hagrid could beat The Rock in a title fight! It's ridiculous! I've waited too long! I want to know what's going to happen to me and my friends, and I want to know NOW!"

"Now, just calm down a sec'," I said, holding up a hand. "Have you tried contacting your friend Jo Rowling, to see what the holdup is?"

"I've--I've tried to contact her," said Harry. "I've tried to, you know, mentally channel myself into her imagination--I'm still not sure how the whole thing works. But it's as if the lines are down. Or as if I'm getting her mental answering machine, and she's saying, 'Leave a message. I'll get back to you when I can.'"

I took another sip from my coffee cup. "And you think all this stuff that's happened in the past couple years, with the movie and all that, might be interfering with your link to her? You think she's spending too much time handling the merchandising, and not enough time writing?"

"It could be that," said Harry. "But then again, maybe it's not. Maybe the merchandising and everything she's doing now, maybe that's not what's keeping her from finishing Book Five. Maybe she's doing all this stuff because she doesn't want to face what's REALLY bothering her."

The kid looked almost frightened, now. He leaned forward, his green eyes filled with concern, his lightning-shaped scar visible beneath the strands of black hair that covered his forehead. "I've heard rumors, you see. Rumors that Jo's imagination may not be as healthy as it once was. I've even heard rumors that she may have--" He glanced from side to side, as if to make sure nobody else was listening. When he spoke, his voice was full of fear. "--Writer's Block!"

He sat back in his chair and adjusted his specs, his face pale. I looked at this kid, so vulnerable and so new to the ways of the literary world. He had a look of anxiety that I'd seen before in a hundred other literary characters who'd come to my office searching for help. In his eyes, I saw a deep-rooted--

"Excuse me!" Harry suddenly exclaimed. He pointed around the room. "I'm sorry, but--what is that?"

I blinked. "What is what?"

"That--that voice that's coming out of the walls and ceilings. It was talking about me just now. It said that you'd seen the look on my face in a hundred other literary characters. I heard it earlier, when you first came in. It was describing me--my hair, and my Quidditch robes, and my scar--but from your point of view. It said that you'd seen my face on the DVDs and all that. And then when you let me in here, into your office, it started describing the desk and the chair and everything."

"Oh, that!" I said, casually. I jerked a thumb towards the ceiling. "That's just the dramatic narration."

Harry Potter looked confused. "The dramatic narration?"

"Look, kid. You think you're the only one here who's got an author?" I pointed to myself. "I got an author, too. His name's Rob Lindsay. He lives in Redmond, Washington, just outside of Seattle. He makes his living writing computer manuals for that big software company that's owned by Bill Gates. But some days, when he's supposed to be working, he checks out the Internet chat rooms and bulletin boards. He's sitting in his apartment writing this story right now, 'cause he's sick and tired of all those "Harry Potter" fans out there grousing and complaining on the Internet 'cause your friend Jo Rowling hasn't finished Book Five yet."

"Really? But how come I never hear the dramatic narration in my own stories? I never hear Jo Rowling's voice coming out of the walls when I'm walking around Hogwarts and doing things. I just--feel her in the back of my mind, you know, kind of like a conscience."

"That's 'cause your stories are written in third-person. MY stories are written in first-person. I have to narrate them as well as act in them."

"Oh. I see."

"Look, when a character from a third-person narrative switches over to a story that's being told in first-person, it can sometimes be scary when they hear the dramatic narration coming out of the walls. It takes some getting used to. But don't sweat it. It's like a voice-over on a TV commercial. It's perfectly normal here."

"All right. If you say so."

Harry Potter sat back in his chair. He seemed to think about what I had told him for a few--

"There it is again!" Harry pointed towards the ceiling. "It was talking about me, sitting back in my chair, just now! Did you hear it?"

"Kid! Kid! Kid!" I held up my hands. "One thing you gotta learn, is that you never interrupt the dramatic narration in a first-person story! Never! It can cause serious story problems, you know what I'm saying?!"

"Sorry," Harry said, sheepishly.

He sat back in his chair again, looking troubled. He looked like a schoolboy who had just been yelled at by the teacher in front of the entire class. I watched him for a few moments. He seemed to be waiting for something. I wondered what he was waiting for.

Then I realized. He was waiting for the same thing I was waiting for. He was waiting for the dramatic narration to finish.

[Long silent pause, during which the author of this story writes nothing.]

"Can I talk now?" Harry burst out.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah! Go ahead and talk!" I said, waving my hands. I rolled my eyes. Geez, this kid had a lot to learn.

"I'm sorry," said Harry. "I'm just--"

He was interrupted by a knock on the waiting room door. He turned in his seat, startled. But I knew who it was. "That you, Mrs. Schnitzel?"

"Ja, it iz me!" came a voice from the other side of the door. "You are with client now, Herr Marlowe?"

"Yes. Could you come back later?"

"Ja. I clean waiting room now, okay?"

"Just the cleaning lady," I told Harry Potter. "Look, kid. Let's get down to business here. If you want to hire me to find this J.K. Rowling dame, I can take the case. But I'll be honest with you. I don't really think you need me."

Harry looked confused. "Excuse me?"

"Listen. I make it a point never to charge for a case that I can solve sitting right here in my office. If you want, I can give you my verdict right now, free of charge. It won't cost you a cent. Or a sickle."

"You mean," Harry exclaimed, "you already know where Jo Rowling is? You know where I can find her?"

"Well, no. I don't know where she is right now. But, with what I know about her, and what I know about YOU, I think I can tell you why she hasn't finished Book Five in your series yet. And that's what you're really worried about, isn't it?"

The kid nodded, uncertainly. "Uhh, yeah."

"Good. Okay, let's look at the facts. First of all, there's two things that I know about you, just from having met you, Harry. The first thing I know is, as far as literary characters go, you're just a babyface."

"A babyface?"

"Yeah. Sure, right now, you're a fourteen-year-old kid. That's your AGE. But as far as being a character in a book, it's only been five years since your first book was published. Some of the other literary characters who are kids--like Huckleberry Finn, Scout Finch, Anne Shirley--they've been around a LOT longer than you. Compared to them, you're just a toddler."

Harry took a moment to digest this. "Okay. What's the other thing you know about me?"

"The other thing I know," I said, "is that you're having trouble dealing with all your success. You walked in here looking like someone who's just been dunked in a tub full of ice water. I mean, why else would you come to see me in my office at this late hour? You're trying to avoid the press finding out that you can't contact your author, right? That's why you keep looking around the room while we're talking here. What're you exepecting the papparazzi to come in through the window, or pop outta the filing cabinets and start taking pictures?"

Harry slouched in his chair. "It's that obvious, huh?"

I nodded. "It stands to reason, you know? You're only five years on the bookshelves, and suddenly your face is on every street corner? I'd be nervous too."

"It's a nightmare sometimes," said Harry, looking dazed. "It used to be I was famous only in the Wizard World. But now it's in the MUGGLE world as well. I can't walk down a street without seeing my face on a billboard, or a magazine cover. People keep coming up to me and asking me for autographs. The other day, this team of photographers showed up at Number Four, Privet Drive. Uncle Vernon was so mad, he called his sister, my Aunt Marge, and told her to send over a couple of pit bulls!"

"Really? Did the dogs hurt anybody?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "No, before Aunt Marge could get there with the dogs, my cousin, Dudley, went out on the front porch and mooned the photographers, and they all turned around and ran like hell."

I laughed hard at this. "Okay, so you've only been at this for five years, and already you're a worldwide sensation. You're having trouble dealing with the fact that everybody in the world knows your name, and knows your face."

I leaned across the desk. "Now, don't you think it's possible that your friend, J.K. Rowling, is having to deal with those same kind of problems too?"

Harry Potter looked as if he'd been hit by a bolt of lightning. I waited. Finally, he said, "I never thought of it that way before."

"Uh, huh," I said, smiling. "See, five years ago, your friend Jo Rowling was an unemployed single mom. Then, to get herself off the dole, she writes a book called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"."

"Sorcerer's Stone?" Harry interrupted, confused. "Oh, you mean, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"."

I shrugged. "Sorcerer's, Philosopher's, whatever! But it became a best seller. Then, a year later, she does "Chamber of Secrets," and suddenly she's at the top of the "New York Times" best-seller list. A year later, she turns out "Prisoner of Azkaban," and now everybody's asking 'Who IS this Harry Potter guy? And who is this J.K. Rowling?'"

"Then comes the Big One! "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!" Kids are camping out at the bookstores to buy it the night that it comes out. Your face is on the cover of "Time and "Newsweek." Nobody's ever seen ANYTHING like this! Your friend Jo Rowling's on top of the world, and everybody knows her name. Now, don't you think she's gonna want to take a step back and DEAL with all this success before she goes on with the rest of the series?"

"I see what you mean," said Harry Potter. "But she never said anything to ME about having to deal with all the success."

I smiled. "Ahh, well. There's one of those things you learn fast, being a literary character, kid. Characters tell their authors everything. But sometimes authors don't tell their characters everything they should. They're only human, you know."

"Okay. So now your friend Jo Rowling has done what nobody else has ever done. She's had four best-sellers in four years. Now THAT, in itself, would be enough to make any author want to stop and catch their breath. But now she's got a problem. The kids like you so much that they want more than just the books. They're saying they want 'Harry Potter' toys, and 'Harry Potter' games, and 'Harry Potter' action figures. And at first, your friend Jo Rowling doesn't want to give them this stuff. She doesn't want you to become overhyped, 'cause she's afraid that that might ruin the significance of the books."

"I know!" Harry broke in. He sounded annoyed, now. "But then she changed her mind! She turned around and she gave them all that stuff, after she said she wouldn't!"

"Ahh," I held up a hand, stopping him. "I wouldn't come down on her too hard, kid. I think maybe she woke up and realized that something had to be done. The thing you got to realize is, she's doing this for you."

"For me?! But I don't want any of this stuff. I don't want to sell toys with my face on them, and all that other stuff. I don't need the money and--"

"What I mean is, she's doing it herself to make sure it gets done right. She woke up and realized that if she didn't do it, then someone else would." I shrugged. "It's a common law of economics that if people want to buy something bad enough, then someone'll find a way to sell it to them. A couple years ago, before all the merchandise came out, kids were already making their own 'Harry Potter' costumes, so they could dress up like you for Halloween. Toy stores were starting to sell magic wands, and brooms with racing stripes on them. I think Jo Rowling decided that she had to go ahead and let the toy companies make the official 'Harry Potter' stuff before people started ripping her off, before they started making knockoff copies of stuff that appeared in the 'Harry Potter' stories. Now THAT would have ruined the significance of the books"

I pointed a finger at him again. "It may throw you off a bit when you see your face on a school lunchbox, but at least this way, your friend Jo Rowling doesn't have to spend all her time filing copyright lawsuits. See, she doesn't want the whole merchandising thing to get out of hand. She doesn't want 'Harry Potter' to become some kind of bad joke fad, like the Spice Girls or Brittney Spears. So she lets the kids have a little of what they want. She lets them have the video games, and the toy wands, and the toy Quidditch brooms--"

"And the dolls, and the action figures, and the playsets--" Harry added, smiling.

"And the coffee mugs, and the backpacks, and the 'Every-Flavor Beans'--"

"And the stuffed toys of Hedwig, and Scabbers the Rat, and Fluffy the Three-Headed Dog--"

"And so on, and so on, and so on," I finished, waving my hand in a circle.

"And you don't think that it's gotten out of hand?"

I shook my head. "Not really. Because the whole thing is still centered around the books. See, the people who are buying all these toys and things are doing it 'cause they loved the books. The books are not like some cheesy Saturday-morning cartoon show, that's MEANT to sell toys. The toys and the merchandise are just something that happened because the books were good reading. And no matter how many 'Harry Potter' toys they sell, people'll always come back to the books. All the media hype and everything can't change the fact that the books are good. Years from now, when all the merchandise is collectors items, the books'll still be there. And they'll be classics."

Harry Potter sat back in his chair and seemed to think about this for a minute. My coffee cup was empty, so I stood up, took the pot from the hotplate, and refilled my cup. "And of course, there's one other thing that your friend Jo Rowling has had to deal with in the past coupla years."

"You mean the movie?" Harry rolled his eyes, then looked at me again. "You saw it?"

"Yeah, I saw it," I said, as I sat back down behind my desk. "Along with everybody else in the rest of the world." (I don't normally go for family fare, but Ebert had said the movie was good--and if you can't trust Ebert, who can you trust?)

"I thought it was good," Harry said. "I did, really! But--well--I thought they could have done it better. I mean, they followed the book pretty well, but--it just didn't seem to have the energy of the book, you know what I'm saying? I sometimes wonder if Chris Columbus was the best director for it. And that kid who played me? Daniel Radcliffe? Well, he spoke his lines okay. But he was so stoic! He should have been walking around Hogwarts with his mouth open, you know, gaping at everything. That's how I was my first year at Hogwarts. But half the time, he was just standing there with no expression on his face. You couldn't tell what he was thinking."

He looked at the floor. "I sometimes wish they'd gotten Haley Joel Osment to play me. He's a better actor. I mean, I know he's American, but--wait a minute. Why are you laughing? What's so funny?"

I leaned back in my swivel chair, a big grin on my face. "Kid, do you know how many literary characters I've had come in here and sit in my office, and complain about the actors who played them on the big screen? Nobody--and I mean, NOBODY--is ever satisfied when their book gets made into a movie!"

"Well," Harry Potter stammered, "my friends Ron and Hermione thought that they got played pretty well. What I mean is, they thought that Rupert Grint and Emma Watson did a good job, and--"

I laughed again, and shook my head. "You're hopeless, kid! Hopeless!"

I sipped my coffee. Harry waited. "All right," I said, "So maybe the movie could have been a little better, but it was still good. No movie version is ever as good as the book that they made it from. But in your case, I think you got lucky. See, when it comes to making books into movies, Hollywood has got a touch like Typhoid Mary. Usually, they give the author of the book a big chunk of money, but the author gets no say in how the movie gets made. The studios give the book to four or five screenwriters who got no idea what it's about, and they churn out a script that's got no heart. Then the studio suits start making stupid suggestions, and they sap all the flavor out of it. And then the movie gets made, and eveybody wonders why it's so bad."

"But your friend, Jo Rowling, took the time to make sure that your movie got done right. She personally picked a director and a script writer who understood the book, understood its heart. Without Jo Rowling, you could've gotten stuck with a no-talent director like Tom Green! Or the guy who directed that stupid "Scooby-Doo" movie that's out there now. You know, the Hollywood suits were talking about combining "Sorcerer's Stone" and "Chamber of Secrets" into one movie, and putting American cheerleaders into the Quidditch matches? There's directors out there who would've TAKEN those suggestions! The movie could've been a real mess."

I traced my finger around the rim of my coffee cup. "Okay, so maybe Chris Columbus ain't the world's most talented director. But he still made a halfway-decent movie, and he stuck to your book. And you got your friend Jo Rowling to thank for that. She picked a director she could trust. Besides, they say Columbus is going to take a break from directing after "Chamber of Secrets." Maybe you'll get lucky and Ken Branagh will step in and direct the rest of the series."

"I hope so," Harry said. "He's a really good director."

"Now, as for Dan Radcliffe," I continued. "Sure, he's no Haley Joel Osment, but you got to remember, Osment's been acting in movies since he was four years old. Dan Radcliffe's done one or two movies, and that "David Copperfield" mini-series. He's still got a lot to learn. But give him a little time. He'll grow into the role. When the movie "Chamber of Secrets" comes out, he'll probably surprise you. Last I heard, he was watching classic movies like "Twelve Angry Men." Kid who watches those kind of movies can't help but learn something."

"You really think so? You really think he'll get better?"

I looked at him. "Hey, "Sorcerer's Stone" was only his first year at Hogwarts, remember? I don't think you were at the top of your game in your first year at Hogwarts, were you?"

Harry smiled awkwardly. "No, I suppose I wasn't. Okay, so Jo has been dealing with the movie and the merchandise and her own success over the past couple of years. But still! Two years? That's a long time to wait for someone to write the next book in a series, don't you think? I mean, she should've finished it by now, shouldn't she?"

I put my coffee cup down on the desk and stared at him a moment, then shook my head again, smiling. "Geez! You ARE a babyface, kid!"

I stood up and moved around the desk. On the left wall of the office were my bookshelves, stacked floor to ceiling with all the fiction I had read or investigated in the past twelve years. On the second shelf from the top, sandwiched between my leather-bound editions of "I, the Jury" and "The Maltese Falcon," were my hardback copies of Books 1-4 in the "Harry Potter" series. I took them off the shelf, holding the four books together between my two hands, and carried them to the desk. I dropped them down on the desktop in a stack, with "Goblet of Fire" resting on top, and sat on the edge of my desk. Harry Potter looked at the books, then at me.

I tapped the top of the stack of books with my fingers. "Quite a tall heap there, wouldn't you say?"

Harry nodded. I pointed to the book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," on the bottom of the stack. "How many pages are in this book?"

"Three-hundred nine," Harry answered, without hesitating.

I pointed to "Chamber of Secrets," second from the bottom. "And in this one?"

"Three-hundred forty-one."

"And in "Prisoner of Azkaban"?"

"Four-hundred thirty-five."

"And "Goblet of Fire" is?"

"Seven-hundred thirty-four."

"And all together that makes?"

"One-thousand eight-hundred nineteen."

I shook my head in amazement. "I can never get over that! How literary characters always know--just KNOW--how many pages they have in each of their books, and can add 'em up like a math wizard."

Harry shrugged. "It's just something I know. I mean, I never counted them or anything."

"Well, I think it's amazing. You know, if you talk to some of William Faulkner's characters--like Bayard Sartoris or Flem Snopes--they can name every novel and short story they ever appeared in, they can tell you the number of pages that they appeared in each novel or story, they can give you the exact page numbers of the pages that they appeared in, and they can total it all up just like that!"

"Really?"

"It's something, I'll tell you, kid." I tapped the top of the stack of "Harry Potter" books again. "So anyway, we've got one-thousand eight-hundred nineteen pages in this stack of books right here. That's a lot of pages, right? How long did it take Jo Rowling to write your first book?"

"Five years. I think she started around 1991."

"Uh huh. So in 1997, "Sorcerer's Stone" gets published. And then from 1997 to 2000, she writes one book a year for three years, including--" I picked up the heavy, seven-hundred thirty-four page copy of "Goblet of Fire" "--this one right here."

"Not many authors have that kind of output, you know? Stephen King's one, but he's a rare exception. I mean, writing is hard. It takes time, and it tires you out. Your friend, Jo Rowling, had to plan out each book, and write out each draft, and go over it word by word, sentence by sentence. All writing is tough, but fantasy writing is the toughest. You've got to make everything believable, you've got to describe everything in detail, you've got to make sure it all works. You've got to make sure the reader sees exactly what you see, in your mind's eye. And that's very hard to do well."

I pointed at Harry. "No reader is going to believe that you can fly your broom in a Quidditch game unless your friend, Jo Rowling, describes it so well that they can picture it in their mind. And that kind of writing takes a lot of effort."

"Now, what else do we know about J.K. Rowling? How does she write?"

Harry thought for a moment. "She writes in longhand. She writes all her drafts in notebooks, with a pen."

"Exactly. She doesn't use a computer or a typewriter until she's got the novel done. And that takes a little more effort. She has to rewrite each draft by hand, word by word, sentence by sentence, until she gets things just perfect."

I put the copy of "Goblet of Fire" back on top of the stack. "And this is the end result. Ten years, four books, four best-sellers. Now, if you had been writing non-stop by hand for almost ten years, and produced almost 2,000 pages, and each of your books had become a best-seller, don't you think you'd be due to take a breather?"

Harry shrugged. "Well, yes, I suppose so."

"Be honest with me, kid," I said, looking him straight in the eye. "After you ran that wizard marathon in "Goblet of Fire," didn't you feel like maybe you could use a rest, especially after four years of non-stop adventures at Hogwarts."

"I sure did," he admitted. "I felt like I could have slept for weeks after that graveyard duel at the end."

I tapped the books on my desk once more. "So think about how J.K. Rowling feels. If you'd produced a volume of work like this in ten years, with every reader in the world breathing down your neck in the last three of those years, you'd say it was time for a break too. I think you'd want to rest up a bit before you tackled the last three books in the series, so you'd be fresh and ready when you started those last three books."

"I see," said Harry, thoughtfully. "Then you don't think she's got Writer's Block?"

"Kid, do you know what Writer's Block is? It's not when the words won't come. It's when the IDEAS won't come. It's when you can't get any good ideas to come into your head. And it usually happens when you've written so much and given so much, that you can't think of anything you ain't already done. You're all out of new ideas. I think if your friend, Jo Rowling, hadn't taken this little break, that by the time she got to Book Six or Seven in the series, she would have burned herself out. She WOULD be getting Writer's Block. But now she's rested. She's ready to get back to work. And she IS working now. I'd make a bet that she's writing now, even as we speak."

"But why's it taking her so long to finish the next book?"

I looked at the stack of books. "You know the interesting thing about these first four books? They're all good. All of them! They've all won major awards. Not just one of these books, but all of them. These books have a magic power to them. They can turn kids away from their TVs and their video games and make them start reading again. They're so good that they can make adults read children's fiction again. There ain't never been a series quite like this before. That's why all four of your books are best-sellers."

I shrugged. "But there's a problem, now. Because the first four books were so good, the last three books in the series have to be just as good. Better, even!"

Again, I pointed to my young client. "Now, you got a lot of stuff to do between now and the end of this series, my friend. Never mind the fact that you've got three more years to go at Hogwarts. You've also got to face Voldemort a few more times. You've got to decide what kind of career you're gonna have in the magic world. You've got to clear the name of your godfather, Sirius Black. You've got yourself a full plate, Harry. And if all that weren't enough, you've got to pick yourself a girl."

Harry blinked. "I've got a girl. Her name is Cho Chang. She's the Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team."

"Ahh, well," I said, smiling, "you may find you have a few more choices when you get back to Hogwarts."

"Like?"

"Like Ginny Weasley, for instance."

He stared at me, dumbfounded. "Ginny Weasley? She's just a kid!"

"She's a year younger than you, kid. You may turn around one day soon and find out that she's date material. And let's not forget your friend, Hermione Granger."

"Hermione? That's crazy! She's going to be Ron's girlfriend, not mine!"

I shook my head, smiling. "You got three more books to go until the end of this series, Harry. A lot can happen in three books. But that's my point. So much is gonna happen to you in these last three books, and your friend Jo Rowling's got to get it all down on paper, lay it all out nice and easy. And that takes time, kid! It takes time to write it all out, and make sure everything's all good and believable, and in its proper order. And that it can all stand up alongside the first four books in your series."

The kid looked off into a corner of the room. I knew he was thinking of all the things he had yet to do, all the dangers he would face, all the decisions he would have to make in his final three books.

I picked up "Goblet of Fire" again, and thumbed through it. "Now THIS was a major accomplishment. You know it won the Nebula Award for best sci-fi novel? No children's book ever did that before. Good sound plot. Lots of suspense. Great stuff to read. Lots of action. Dragons and ghosts and mer-people. Uh, oh! What's this?"

I opened the book at page 667. "Something's not right here. You're in the graveyard, battling Voldemort. You've tried using your wands against each other and that 'Priori Incantatem' spell's happening. So now Voldemort's wand is shooting out memories of its former spells, or something like that. You see the ghost of Peter Pettigrew's arm come out of the wand. Then the ghost of Cedric Diggory. Then comes the ghost of the old man that Voldemort killed back in Chapter One. Then comes Bertha Jorkins." I looked up from the book. "Who's next?"

Harry gulped. "My mother and father."

"Exactly. Your father's image comes out of Voldemort's wand. Then comes your mother's image."

I flipped through the book, to page 697. "Now, later in the book, after you've gotten back from the graveyard, you're sitting in Dumbledore's office, telling him what happened. And he tells you that, when the 'Priori Incantatem' spell is triggered, and I quote: 'One of the wands will force the other to regurgitate spells in reverse. The most recent first, and then those which preceded it.'"

I shut the book and looked at my young friend. "Now, if I remember correctly from Book One, when Voldemort first came after you and your family, your father was killed first, and THEN your mother died. So if this "Priori Incantatem" spell-thing forces the wand to cough up spells in reverse order, should your mother's image have come out of the wand first, and then your father's?"

Harry nodded. "I wondered about that when it happened. I thought maybe it was something that Jo would explain some place in a future book."

I shook my head. "I don't think she's going to explain it in a future book, kid."

The Boy Wizard winced hard. "You think she might have made a mistake?"

"I think she was in a rush to finish the book, and she made a continuity error. Not a serious one, fortunately, but that what happens when you're writing and you try to rush yourself. You get careless. You make mistakes. There's others in this book."

I browsed the back pages of the book again. "Now where did I see that. Oh, yeah. Here it is. Page 685. She refers to Barty Crouch as "Moody." And this is AFTER Mad-Eye Moody has transformed into Barty Crouch. "'The Imperius Curse,' Moody said. 'I was under my father's control.'"--it says here."

I shut the book once more. "Thing is, kid, continuity errors like that can turn into plot holes. If you're careless enough, a continuity error can ruin an entire book, maybe even a series. I think your friend Jo Rowling is taking a bit more time writing Book Five 'cause she wants to make sure it's all done right, with no mistakes this time. That's why I think you gotta give her some slack."

Harry Potter sat on his chair, his arms folded, thinking about what I had said. I moved to the bookshelf again. "You know what happens when an author gets too careless? When they don't take the time to really look at their work and try to improve it? Their writing gets sloppy. The defects start showing up big time. Give you a quick example here. You've heard of Tom Clancy?"

"Yeah," said Harry, looking up. "I mean, I haven't read any of his books, but I saw the movie with Ben Affleck."

I stooped over and pulled my copy of "Executive Orders" off the bottom shelf. "Tom Clancy hasn't written a decent novel since the Cold War ended. It's not that he doesn't have good material to work on. His plots are always big and brash, and he writes all that military techno-jargon fairly well. But he's gotten too big for his britches. After he did "Hunt For Red October," presidents and CIA chiefs and army generals started calling him up, asking him for military advice. And he got a big head, seemed to think that nobody should question his judgement--including his editors."

I opened the book. "My favorite line is here in "Executive Orders" on page 52. Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan, has become the President of the United States. He's having a Cabinet meeting with his Secretaries of State and Defense and all that. They're talking about this conflict that the U.S. just had with Japan. The Director of the F.B.I. tells Jack Ryan, 'For that matter, we know that Japan recently developed nuclear weapons.' The next sentence reads, and I quote: 'Even the coffee turned cold with that remark.'"

I paused, waiting for this to sink in. After a moment, Harry Potter burst out laughing. "That IS pretty bad. That assumes that the coffee is actually listening to the conversation!"

"Yeah, it also assumes that the coffee has enough of an understanding of the global arms race to know that Japan having nuclear weapons is a bad thing." I shut the book, smiling. "See, Tom Clancy writes these thousand-page thrillers--this one's 1350 pages long--and he sends them off to his publishers, and they publish them without even looking at them. Nobody's brave enough to tell him how lousy his writing is. They just ship it off to the printers, sight unseen. And what's the result? Mediocre fiction, kid. Stuff that gets read maybe once and then gets sold at a rummage sale. Stuff that'll be forgotten twenty years from now. Stuff that ain't worth keeping."

Laying the book down, I moved around the desk and sat down once more in my swivel chair. "But your author, J.K. Rowling, she's better than that. Know what the difference is? She cares about her audience! She's not some hack writer out to turn a fast buck. She cares what the kids are gonna think when they read what she writes. She knows that kids these days won't stick with a book if it ain't well-written, or if you try to short-change 'em. Especially a fantasy book. So she's gonna work hard, give 'em the best piece of reading she can give 'em. And now that she's caught herself making a few small mistakes in her rush to get the books out, you can bet she's going to check her story twice before she sends it off to the editor."

I looked at my desk. "Another good thing I noticed when I was reading the books. Your friend Jo Rowling never cheats her characters."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's happened once or twice that even a good author will ruin a story when they make their characters do stuff they wouldn't do, stuff that's out of character. Thomas Harris wrote one of the best horror books of all time, "The Silence of the Lambs." It had a great heroine, an F.B.I. agent named Clarice Starling, tracking down a serial killer. Then, Harris writes the sequel, called "Hannibal." And Clarice Starling is back, hunting down Dr. Hannibal Lecter. So what does Harris do to her in this story? He gets Clarice Starling fired from the F.B.I., turns her into Hannibal Lecter's sugar-baby, and has her join him for dinner where they both eat the F.B.I. agent who fired her. Completely ruined the book. I heard Clarice Starling was so mad at Harris for what he made her do that she tried to sue him. Can you beat that? A character trying to sue her own author!"

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "You don't think Jo Rowling would do something like that to me, would she?"

"What, make you fall in love with a cannibal killer?"

"No, no!" He laughed. "I mean, she wouldn't make me do something against my character, would she? She wouldn't make me do something evil? Or give me some kind of crummy ending like that?"

"Like what, for instance?"

"Well, I've been reading things on the Internet." He sounded a bit worried now. "Just rumors. People are reading the first four books, and some of them are saying it's obvious that Voldemort is my father, or my grandfather! And that Hermione Granger is my sister! Jo wouldn't do something like THAT to me, would she?"

I leaned back in my chair, laughing hard. "Ignore 'em! Those are "Star Wars" fans trying to fit their favorite sci-fi mythos into your books. They've got no originality! They're stale! Nahh, kid, Jo Rowling's better than that! She's not gonna fall back on some pop-culture cliché."

I put my hands on my desk. "Listen, I don't know what your author's got in store for you in the last three books, but you can bet it'll be something really original. She's not gonna sell you short. Or her readers, either. It's like you said. She's not trying to control you. She's letting you run free in her imagination, letting you do what you gotta do. And she's just following along, giving you a push now and then, letting the story write itself. When it comes time for you to tell her what you've got to do next, she'll listen to what you have to say. Long as she keeps doing that, I think the stories'll work out fine."

Harry shrugged. "I still think two years is too long to wait for someone to write a sequel."

I laughed again. "You kids, today! You got no patience! Instant gratification isn't quick enough, huh? Listen, did you know that, after he wrote "Tom Sawyer," it took Mark Twain eight years to finish "Huckleberry Finn?" He had such a hard time with it, he almost didn't finish it. And after he wrote "The Hobbit," J.R.R. Tolkien took seventeen years to write the "Lord of the Rings." And you're worried about waiting two years?"

I jerked a thumb out the window. "Look, there's novelists out there--good ones like Pat Conroy, and Mark Helprin, and Tom Wolfe--who take years and years to finish a single book! But when they publish a new book, it's an event! Every word is in the right place, and it's always something worth reading."

I pointed to the stack of 'Harry Potter' books on my desk. "Same with your girl, Jo Rowling! Whenever she decides to finish Book Five and publish it, people are gonna read it and say it was well worth the wait. Just count yourself lucky, kid. You got an author who can write fast and write well at the same time."

Harry sighed. "I guess I AM pretty lucky."

"Hey, you mind if I ask you something?" I said. "There's dozens of literary detectives out there. You coulda chosen any one of 'em. Hercule Poirot. Miss Jane Marple. Kinsey Milhone. Why'd you come to me?"

"Well, to tell the truth," said Harry, "I didn't know who to go to. So I tried to go to Sherlock Holmes first."

"Oh, good choice."

"Yeah, I used to read his stories a lot, when the Dursleys would lock me in the cupboard under the stairs. But when I went to 221B Baker Street in London, Sherlock Holmes wasn't there. Neither was Dr. Watson. His landlady, Mrs. Hudson, said that Mr. Holmes hadn't been there in a year or two, and that she didn't know when he'd be back."

"Ahh, see there?" I wagged a finger at him. "That's another advantage that you got. You got an author who loves you. Mr. Holmes was the best detective any of us ever saw. We all learned so much from him. But his author, Arthur Conan Doyle? Well, he HATED Sherlock Holmes! Doyle thought he should be working on more important stuff like sci-fi stories about dinosaurs and lost worlds. He didn't realize that Sherlock Holmes was the best thing he'd ever done, or would ever do."

"So what does Doyle do? He tries to kill Holmes off! He brings out Professor Moriarty and sets him against Holmes, sends 'em both over a cliff into the Reichenbach Falls! It took Sherlock Holmes ten years to climb out of there. Know who finally pulled him out? The readers! They loved Holmes so much, they demanded that Arthur Conan Doyle bring him back! And Doyle finally did. But Holmes and Doyle never really trusted each other after that."

I shrugged. "Just goes to show you, kid. Readers have a power too. If they love a character enough, they can even bring him back from the dead."

"Really?" He thought for a moment. "I wonder if my readers could help me bring back my parents. Or maybe Cedric Diggory."

"Well," I said, thoughtfully, "stranger things have happened in the pages of books."

"Is Sherlock Holmes still alive?"

"Oh, sure! He's still around. I seen him from time to time. Every now and then, somebody like Nicholas Meyer or Laurie King writes a good pastiche of him, and he comes back. That's another great thing about fiction. If people love a character enough, sometimes they'll want to write new stories about him, even after the author's done with him. And sometimes those stories turn out to be just as good. You're probably getting a bit of that yourself. That stuff they call "fan fiction?" It's all over the Internet, right?"

Harry Potter nodded. "I've seen it. Some of it's not bad."

"There you go. But, sorry I interrupted you. Why'd you decide to come see me?"

"Well, after I left Baker Street, I ran into this girl named Wendy Darling. She recommended you. She said you'd helped her boyfriend, Peter Pan, to find his shadow."

"Oh, yeah. Peter Pan," I said, thoughtfully. "Nice kid. So glad he turned out okay after all that happened."

"What do you mean?"

I looked down into my coffee cup. "Well, kid. Put it this way. Some literary characters, especially kids, don't take their fame as well as you do."

Harry gave a half-laugh. "What do you mean, 'as well as I do?' I don't take it well at all! I'm a nervous wreck with all this attention. You said so yourself."

"Yeah, that's what I mean. You don't take to the spotlight. You don't like being a star. All you want to do is be a normal kid, a Hogwarts student, a Quidditch player. Trust me, that's GOOD! You're not letting the success go to your head!"

"Are you saying--? Peter Pan--?"

I nodded. "He let himself get caught up in all the hoopla. He was living the high life. And I mean HIGH! Flying 'round the moon, crowing like a rooster in the middle of the night, all that sort of jazz. Kid had such a big head you wouldn't believe it. He had a lot of growing up to do, and he absolutely refused to do it."

"So what happened to him?"

"Ahh, the kid started doing pixie dust. Got hooked on it. Stay away from that stuff, by the way. It's dangerous. Truth be told, it was Wendy who hired me to get his shadow back. He lost it, sure--in a dice game! Then he disappears from NeverLand for weeks. Wendy comes to me, sobbing, one night. She's going nuts worrying about him, and the Lost Boys are, well, lost without him. So I tracked him down. Found him in this Pirate tavern, trying to challenge Jim Hawkins to a knife fight. Kid was so high on pixie dust, he kept flying up in the air and banging his head on the ceiling rafters. I got him out of there just before Long John Silver cut his throat. Got him back to NeverLand."

"But he's all right now?"

"Yeah, he got clean and sober. Got himself a new deal with Disney. He made a comeback this year, had a new movie out. You might have seen the ads?"

Harry nodded. "Hope I never get that bad."

I smiled. "You won't."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yeah, I think you're handling the fame really well, kid. I mean, you're in here talking to me, 'cause you're worried about your author. You're not out partying in some club, tonight. And you're not out flying your Quidditch broom down the highway at 100 miles an hour and wrapping it around a telephone pole." I shrugged. "I got a feeling about you, kid. I got a feeling that when the books are all written, and the movies have all been made, and the hype is all over, you're gonna be with us for a long time to come."

"I hope so," said Harry Potter, with a bewildered look. "So what do I do while I'm waiting for Jo Rowling to get in touch with me again?"

"Relax," I suggested. "Enjoy this little break in the action while it lasts. Remember, this is the eye of the hurricane for you, kid. From here on out, it's total war for you. You'll be going toe-to-toe with your worst enemy."

Harry let a puff of air pass through his lips. "Voldemort," he said, ruefully.

"Right," I said. "So give yourself some downtime. Do some reading of your own, before things get crazy again. Go back and re-read those 'Sherlock Holmes' stories. Maybe you can pick up some pointers for your next case. There's bound to be a new mystery waiting for you when you get back to Hogwarts. And read some other fantasies, while you're at it. Try Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials.' Try Susan Cooper's 'The Dark Is Rising.' Try Mark Helprin's 'Swan Lake' trilogy, or Robin McKinley's 'Hero and the Crown.' You can probably pick up some good pointers on how to fight dragons in that last one."

"You could try some of the old reliables. Like Mark Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Dinesin. They're always good. And I know you like flying, kid. So look around for a book called 'West With The Night,' by Beryl Markham. It's a memoir; she was a bush pilot in Africa in the 1930's. It's the best book about flying you'll ever read."

"And then, after you've read a few of these guys, before you know it, your friend Jo Rowling'll be back. She'll be calling you, saying, 'Come on, Harry. Let's go find a new adventure.' Give the lady time, my friend. She'll come through for you."

Harry Potter sat very quietly for a few seconds. Then he shrugged and said, very softly, "Okay."

He stood up and faced me across the desk. "I guess I'd better be going then. Thanks, Mr. Marlowe. Thanks for being honest with me. You're a good man to talk to."

"Yeah, maybe I ought to put a couch in here and become a head shrink for kids like you," I said, smiling. I reached across the desk and offered him a hand. He took it, and shook it with a firm, strong grip. "It was nice to meet you, kid. And listen, if another year or two goes by, and you still haven't heard from J.K. Rowling, give me a call. I'll make some inquiries and see what I can find out."

"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again."

The Boy Wizard turned and moved to the door. He opened it, then turned to me. "Oh, by the way, Mr. Marlowe. It might not be any of my business, but do you happen to know what YOUR author's got in store for you? That Lindsay guy, I mean. Is he going to give you a new case soon?"

I grinned, and leaned back in my chair. "Yeah, I got a big one coming up. I'm gonna be teaming up with this hot little number called Lady Chatterly. This is gonna be a sweet case, I can tell."

Harry Potter smiled bemusedly. "Well, hope you have fun. So long."

"Goodbye, Harry." I said.

He went out and closed the door. He was back again in a flash, his face white!

"Mr. Marlowe! My Firebolt is gone!"

"What?" I stood up from my chair, and went round the desk.

"My Quidditch broom. It's not here."

I followed him into the waiting room. He pointed to the empty corner where he'd left the broom. "I know I left it right here. But it's gone."

I looked around. The room smelled of ammonia and Pine-Sol. The only person who had been in here was--?

"Oh, no," I said.

A loud scream sounded from the hall outside! I opened the office door, just in time to see a plump, middle-aged woman in a gray dress streak past the doorway! Mrs. Schnitzel, the cleaning lady, was hanging onto the Firebolt as it flew down the hall six feet in the air! She was being dragged behind the broom like a fish on a line, her feet not touching the floor, her hands clenched around the broomstick, unable to let go! As Harry and I watched in horror, she did a double-orbit around the ceiling lamp that illuminated the stairwell, then turned and barreled back up the hall towards us!

Harry and I crouched low on the hall floor, as Mrs. Schnitzel and the Firebolt sailed over our heads, both screaming loudly! She flew over her cleaning cart, and through the open door of the Ladies Room, which she had apparently been cleaning. Through the open doorway, we saw her zigzag around the Ladies Room, then turn and come flying back out! We flattened ourselves against opposite walls as she flew between us, screaming, "Herr Marlooooooooooowe!!"

"When she comes back down the hall, we catch her!" I shouted. Harry nodded.

After her sixth turn around the ceiling lamp, the Firebolt banked and dragged Mrs. Schnitzel back toward us! Harry and I both jumped and grabbed her around the legs! The momentum of the flying broom carried us backwards about five feet, and I felt the edge of the cleaning cart slam into my back. The cart tilted, but didn't tip over. Very quickly, Harry and I pulled Mrs. Schnitzel down until her feet were touching the floor! Harry reached up and caught hold of his Firebolt, and it dropped limp in his hand.

Mrs. Schnitzel's wrinkled face was drained of blood. Her eyes were wide and she was breathing hard! The pink kerchief bound around her head was in disarray, and strands of gray-brown hair were falling out from under it into her eyes. I had to hold her up by her elbows to keep her from falling over.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Schnitzel?" I asked.

"I-I-I-I-I am fine!" she wheezed, panting heavily. "I-I-I vos sveeping out der restroom and--and--"

"I'm really sorry, Mrs. Schnitzel," Harry Potter said. "I shouldn't have left my broom in the waiting room."

She looked at him with a dazed expression, then looked at the broom in his hands. She pointed to it with a shaking finger. "It-it-it vos--vos a flying broom?!" She put a hand on her forehead. "I-I-I saw it sitting in ze corner! I sought it vos one of mine, I sought maybe I had left it zere lass night!!"

"I'm really sorry," Harry said, sheepishly. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Turning to the cleaning cart, I pulled out a small drawer and rummaged around in the bottles of ammonia, bleach, glass cleaner, and pine rinse until I found what I was looking for: The fifth of bourbon that I knew Mrs. Schnitzel kept there for special occasions. After checking the label to make sure it was, in fact, bourbon, I uncorked the bottle and pushed it into her hands. "Perhaps you'd better take a sip of this," I told her.

"Oh! Yes. Sank you." She took a long swig from the bottle.

"Is your Firebolt okay?" I asked Harry, with a grin.

"Yes, it seems all right," he answered, looking at it. He was trying not to laugh now. "Oh, brother. Wait until I tell Ron and Hermione about this one!"

He looked at me. "I'd better go. Thanks again, Mr. Marlowe."

We shook hands again. "Take care, kid," I said.

"Goodbye, Mrs. Schnitzel," said Harry.

"Oh! Yes. Goodbye." She was still taking large gulps from her bourbon bottle.

Harry Potter walked down the hall and turned the corner. I heard him go down the stairs and out the door.

"Are you sure you'll be all right, Mrs. Schnitzel?" I asked.

Mrs. Schnitzel swayed slightly on her feet. "Hmm? Oh! Yes. I vill be fine." She pointed after Harry. "Er, zat boy? He has--He had a scar, right here." She pointed to her forehead, then looked at me, dazed. "Vos he--? Vos zat--?"

I nodded, smiling gently. "Yes, Mrs. Schnitzel. That was Harry Potter."

"Oh." She shrugged. "I should have gotten his autograph, ja?"

I left Mrs. Schnitzel in the hallway, still taking large swallows of bourbon from her bottle. Returning to my office, I shut the door and sat down once more behind my desk. As I looked out the open window, I saw Harry Potter walking on the street below. He stopped, as if feeling my gaze, and looked up at my window. He raised a hand and smiled. I waved back. He turned and walked away under the street lamps, his Quidditch broom over his shoulder, his magic wand sticking out of the pocket of his robes.

I turned from the window, picked up my coffee cup from the desk, and drank the last of it. The coffee was cold now, but I felt a sudden jolt in my chest. I reached under my shirt and felt a soft fuzziness sprouting inside. I'd told Harry that Cookie's coffee would put hair on your chest, and I wasn't kidding. I'd have to ask Cookie to tone it down a bit on the coffee, or I might end up looking like Harry's old teacher, Remus Lupin.

Across the way, Little Boy Blue was still blowing his horn, waiting for the sheep to come home from the meadows, for the cows to come home from the corn. The deep, sad notes floated in through the open window, lingering like the distant echos of yesterday. I set my coffee cup down, turned toward the window, and rested my elbows on my knees. Cupping my hands to the sides of my face, I shouted across the street:

"HEY!! THE STORY'S OVER!! COULD YA KNOCK OFF THE SAX?!!"


End file.
